The laws, orders, and proclamations above caused quite a stir in the Japanese population. Relocation caused the breakup of families, the loss of property, assets, and personal possession, as well as significant hardship and inconvenience. Situations as seen in David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars must have been common throughout the west Coast as families packed up on short notice. Most of the Japanese population were not, and could not become US citizens according to US law, and most of the Japanese who were citizens by birth were still quite young, so there was very little they could do about their situation. Regardless, the United States Supreme Court addressed four cases about controversies resulting from Executive Order 9066. The first two of these cases were Hirabayashi v. United States and Yasui v. United States. These cases are very similar in both content and outcome. They are significant as they upheld the constitutionality of both the curfews for American citizens of Japanese descent, and of "differentiating citizens of Japanese ancestry from other groups in the United States."{4},{5}

The last case centered on Mitsuye Endo. The War Relocation Authority had granted Ms. Endo leave clearance from the internment camp, but the Western Defense Command would not allow her to re-enter the restricted military zone. Her case reached the Supreme Court in Ex Parte Endo where she demanded that she be restored to liberty because the regulations holding her were invalid. The Court granted her petition, but refused to rule on constitutional grounds. The Court merely found that, pursuant to the War Relocation Authority statute and Executive Order 9066, the War Relocation Authority had no power to subject admittedly loyal citizens to its leave procedure, meaning they had no power to detain loyal citizens. The court explicitly left open the possibility that the Order allowed for the detention of citizens and non-citizens whose loyalty was unknown.{7}

While the Court understood the delicate nature of the cases they were making decisions on, they relied heavily on "military expediency" as the reasoning behind their verdicts. Some of the Justices did not agree with the majority decision, and even considered it overt racism, but their dissents did not hold any force of law.

The Japanese and Japanese Americans living on the West Coast during World War II suffered terrible hardships due to their national origin. The verdicts of the US Supreme Court are astounding in that they ruled as legal to do some of the things that were done based on race. It is just as astounding that since the relocation derived from an Executive Order, ratified by act of Congress, nothing exists to prevent a future President from reissuing a similar Executive Order. For an example closer to the present, in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, at least one Arab American was arrested at a local airport, apparently because he looked Arab, and Arabs are known to commonly perform acts of terrorism. Under the Supreme Court's holding in Korematsu v. United States, this was proper and legal. It is unfortunate that the occurrences of nearly 50 years ago are still not resolved, and the government has done very little in way of reparations.